Why Anderson Varejao Is the Cleveland Cavaliers' Biggest X-Factor
By Luke Petkac , Featured Columnist Sep 22, 2014
Barry Gossage/Getty Images
Cleveland needs Varejao at 100 percent this season.
It's easy to overlook
Anderson Varejao on a team boasting LeBron James, Kevin Love and
Kyrie Irving. It's also a mistake.
The
Cleveland Cavaliers' 2014-15 season hinges on Varejao—specifically Varejao's health—more than perhaps anything else.
It's no secret that Varejao has struggled to stay healthy in recent years. He's appeared in just 146 games dating back to the 2010-11 season and has suited up for over 35 games just once. It's not as though Varejao has had trouble with one specific injury—he's missed time for a huge
list of problems.
The good news for Cavs fans is that if Varejao's ever going to be fully healthy, now would probably be the time.
This Cleveland squad is shallow in the frontcourt, but it has enough talent and flexibility to avoid burdening Varejao with too many minutes. And that's important because the Cavs absolutely need him at 100 percent this season. Frontcourt depth is an issue even with Varejao heathy. Imagine what it would be like without him.
Varejao is a terrific, albeit weird, defensive center. Unlike most great bigs, he can't protect the rim—opponents shot 55 percent
at the basket against him last year. However, he counters that weakness by doing just about everything else defensively, and the Cavs were a
top-10 defense when he was on the court last season.
Varejao's best skill is his pick-and-roll defense, which can be smothering when he really ratchets up the pressure.
He's super-aggressive on pick-and-rolls (sometimes overly so), and his ability to deny ball-handlers paths to the rim goes a long way toward mitigating his rim protection. Varejao faced just 5.2 attempts per game
at the rim last year. That's an impressively low number considering how leaky the Cavs' perimeter defense was, even after factoring in his relatively few minutes.
His combination of quickness and activity also make Varejao a terror in the passing lanes. He's a smart gambler and racks up tons of deflections and steals through sheer energy alone. Over the past three seasons, Varejao's posted a steal rate of over two percent, putting him in
elite company among centers.
Courtesy of Instagiffer.
Courtesy of Instagiffer.
Varejao's elite defensive rebounding is also worth considering here. Last season, Varejao snagged
28.6 percent of opponents' misses when he was on the floor, a massive number. Ending possessions is a big part of playing defense, and few players do that better than him.
Last year, the Cavs snagged a
league-leading 77.7 percent of opposing teams' misses when Varejao was on the floor. When he sat, that mark fell to a sub-average 74.2 percent. He has that kind of impact on the glass by himself. Put him next to Love, and opponents may never get an offensive rebound.
Read all of that again. Losing defense like that would cause problems for any squad. But Varejao going down wouldn't just cause the Cavs problems; it would submarine their flexibility.
Essentially, without Varejao, Cleveland would have no choice but to play small almost all of the time.
The Cavs' only true center behind Varejao is 34-year-old Brendan Haywood, who missed all of last season with a
foot injury. With all due respect to Haywood, he's a marginal player at this point in his career. Unless he makes some kind of Chris Andersen-like renaissance playing alongside James (not likely), it would be unwise to make him much more than a stopgap option against huge lineups.
To be fair, Cleveland is too talented for that lack of flexibility to present a big issue in the regular season. It's guaranteed to score like crazy and could probably construct a near top-10 defense with bizarre lineups that are big on the wing and small up front—something like Irving-Shawn Marion-James-Tristan Thompson-Love.
But that wouldn't cut it in the postseason, when teams would have a full seven-game series to scout out and exploit Cleveland's glaring lack of size. Among everything else he brings to the table, Varejao is also the Cavs' best defender in the post. To hear
Fear the Sword's Trevor Magnotti tell it:
Varejao's size can raise concerns about how well he can handle the bigger centers of the league, but in post ups, Varejao can be a very frustrating defender for even the best post-up threats of the league. Varejao rarely gets backed down in the post, and most of the time opponents have to settle for fall-aways, jump hooks, or turn-around jumpers from outside the paint.
Love and Thompson are decent post defenders, per
Synergy Sports Technology (subscription required), but neither have the size to take on the league's best scoring bigs like Varejao can.
Haywood has the size, but he lacks quickness, and anything he gives on the defensive end he
takes away offensively. In the Eastern Conference, the
Toronto Raptors,
Washington Wizards,
Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte
Bobcats and others could all take serious advantage of the Cavs down low, and there's no real solution for Cleveland without Varejao.
The other issue that arises from playing small nearly full time is James' workload.
James is a
holy terror at the 4, but he has trouble banging with certain of the league's bigs (think
David West). In
Miami, Shane Battier took up that mantle so James could avoid taking the beating that went along with it, and it'll be interesting to see if Cleveland attempts to do something similar when it goes small.
Of the Cavs' current players, only Marion has the flexibility to attempt something like that. He's getting up there in years, however, and his body may not be up to it.
Protecting James is particularly critical because it's an issue that extends beyond this season. Obviously, it's important to keep him fresh for the playoffs, but just as important is keeping him fresh for the rest of his career.
James is just 29 years old, but in terms of his
NBA lifespan, he's significantly older. He's just seven minutes away from logging 40,000 minutes for his career—regular and postseasons combined—per
Basketball-Reference.
Just 11 other active players have racked up that same mileage, and the youngest of them is the 36-year-old
Dirk Nowitzki. The only player even in the same wheelhouse as James in terms of age/minutes played is Tony Parker, who's logged 37,691 minutes. And he's a full three years older than James.
Courtesy of infogr.am.
James has been superhuman throughout his career, but eventually some tread is going to come off the tires. And while Varejao's missing time isn't going to cause James to spontaneously combust, if the Cavs are able to play big consistently, it could help further his NBA career.
Conclusion
James, Love and Irving may be Cleveland's best players, but its season will hinge just as much on Varejao's health as it does those three. With Varejao healthy, Cleveland is an offensive juggernaut with enough defensive flexibility to take on anyone. Without him, that flexibility goes completely out the window and so too does the Cavs' title chances.
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